Let me introduce!

I am Robin, 28 years old and live in Glasgow Scotland. I am an emergency vet in a second line hospital.I currently work for Vets Now Glasgow, a second line hospital that simultaneously accommodates patients from surrounding clinics for emergency and out of hours care. I work mostly at night for this reason.

I started here in July 2022 as an "intern," which is a veterinary graduate eager to gain more knowledge and experience in an environment with specialists in certain areas of veterinary medicine, and stayed on as an emergency physician after my internship. Unfortunately, my work schedule and living environment, in my opinion, is not suitable for having an animal.

I personally find that I cannot provide the necessary care and love that a pet needs at this time, which I find very unfortunate. This always gives me a lot of motivation to visit my parents and their pets, two amazing Bernese Mountain dogs. I would like to take in a cat in the future when I can offer him/her enough.

Why did you choose this field?

In fact, veterinary medicine was never my first choice, contrary to what most veterinarians say. That is not to say that I don't have a connection with animals, quite the contrary.

With my parents, we always had pets, so I learned from an early age to take care of them and built a special connection with them. However, for work I wanted a profession where I could make people happy and help them in difficult situations.

Through a friend I then joined veterinary medicine in Antwerp and after a few years I noticed that there is so much to achieve within veterinary medicine, both for the animal itself but also for the connection between the owner and the animal.

This gave me so much energy and motivation to finish my studies that I did the hard years and have now found a very cool job in Glasgow.

Why do you think cats need a scratching post? And what else do they need to live nicely indoors and outdoors?

It is very important for animals, not only cats, to be able to perform their normal behaviors.

For example, for chickens it is very important that they can dust bath. If animals are no longer able to perform these behaviors they will perform other behaviors as a replacement, this is also called a stereotype, and sometimes these are not good for the animal.

Sharpening and trimming their nails is normal behavior for cats. When a cat goes outside they will use trees for this purpose. Nowadays, cats stay indoors much more often, or live in apartments without an opportunity to go outside.

A scratching post is a good substitute for cats to perform their normal behavior.Every cat is different and have different things they like. So I think it is very important to tailor certain things to your cat. As long as the basic needs like food, drink and shelter are there and the cat can perform their natural behavior, they should have a good life.

What peculiarities, diseases and accidents in cats do you often encounter in this work?

Unfortunately, we often see cats, especially male ones, with urinary and urinary problems.

Sometimes cats may develop a bladder infection and this causes obstruction of the urinary tract. At that point it is no longer possible for the cat to urinate, which can lead to major problems, and even cardiac arrest.

Often we hear a story from the owner that the cat behaves oddly, goes to the litter box often but produces nothing there, or that it looks like the cat is constipated. In some situations, we even see that the cat is vomiting and painful in its abdomen.

We would like to see these patients as soon as possible to correct the blockage. There are several causes for this bladder inflammation. Most people immediately think of a bacterial infection but this is only the case in about 2% of these cases.

Other causes are crystals or bladder stones but in most cases we see that there is no medical cause for this inflammation. Multiple studies have shown that there is a connection with stress in cats and these cystitis, and often I hear stories of other animals in the house, moving or remodeling, or other stressful situations in these cats.

So I advise owners to reduce all forms of stress as much as possible after treatment, in order to prevent relapses as much as possible.

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